[2] He discovered that a stack of two sheets of graphene, cooled to 1.7 K, could act as a superconductor or as an insulator when exposed to an electric field.
[3][4] In 2018, Nature chose him as one of 10 people who mattered that year in science, calling him a "graphene wrangler.
[2] Cao was admitted to and started his undergraduate education at the Special Class for the Gifted Young of the University of Science and Technology of China in 2010.
He traveled to the United States and studied at the University of Michigan as an undergraduate exchange student from 2012 to 2013.
[10] After graduation in 2020, he began his postdoctoral research in Pablo Jarillo-Herrero's group studying graphene.